Bengals squander 11-point lead, lose at Chicago

Posted by Mike Wilkening on September 8, 2013, 4:25 PM EDT

AP

Oh, the Bengals could rue this one.

The Bengals had a 21-10 third-quarter lead at Chicago on Sunday, but they could not hold it, and the Bears, on the strength of a strong second half from their offense and timely playmaking from their defense, earned a 24-21 victory at Soldier Field.

The Bengals’ defense is one of the NFL’s better groups, but on Sunday, it allowed two second-half TD drives of 80 yards or more, with the latter one ending in what ultimately was the decisive TD catch from Brandon Marshall midway through the fourth quarter. What’s more, Chicago held the ball for the final 6:38 to secure victory.

Turnovers hurt the Bengals. Andy Dalton was picked by Charles Tillman on his second pass, which set up a Martellus Bennett touchdown. In the fourth quarter, wideout Mohamed Sanu fumbled not long after the Bengals had forced a turnover their own, giving the ball right back to Chicago, which capitalized with Marshall’s TD catch to punctuate an eight-play drive.

The Bengals did plenty of good things on Sunday. A.J. Green (nine catches, 162 yards, two TDs) played very well. Also, the Bears are a skilled team capable of a strong comeback like they put together on Sunday. And hey, all teams go through Sundays like the one Cincinnati had.

Nevertheless, this was a game the Bengals didn’t finish as strongly as they will need to if they are to be contenders.

Same oh Bengals! We outplayed them and lost because of mistakes, and turnovers. Same oh crap since the 91 when Mike Brown took over. He needs to bury himself in the sand and take the coaching staff with him.

This game pissed me off something fierce, we looked undisciplined with our use of timeouts, personal fouls, and turnovers. Also clock management was pathetic. I realize it was game one but winners find a way to win games….Bengals are definitely a better team but its time to turn the corner and become winners. This was our same old crap!

As someone who lives in Chicago and hates the Bears this was hard to watch. Bengals should have won this by two scores. Someone should tell Marvin they only get three timeouts in a half and they need to hold on to them sometimes.

Bengals lost due to player lack of discipline.
And that is on the coaching.

larryboodry says:Sep 8, 2013 4:45 PM

Lot of good things here for the Bears…Strong showing by the offense, especially in the 2nd. half, no sacks allowed by the improved o-line, and three takeaways on defense. But Dalton-to-Green almost killed us.

All those people whining saying Bears should of lost, there’s not such thing as hypotheticals. Like Mora used to say you can’t say coulda woulda shouda all the time. Bears won, Bengals lost get over it.

1 Charles Tillman is a heck of a player
2 Vontaze Burfict is a monster
3 I hate Cutler more than any other QB in the league
4 Marvin Lewis is the worst game management coach ever and has the ability to hold this team back.

There seems to be this misconception that the Bengals dominated this game and the Bears somehow, miraculously won. In what way? Look at the stats. Sorry but the better team today won. Have fun with the excuses.

orivar says:Sep 8, 2013 5:03 PM

“As Brian Billick said today, the NFC North is the toughest division in the NFL.”

I’m not sure about that as the NFC West all are looking to have some amazing defenses.

aceinthehole12 says:
Sep 8, 2013 4:40 PM
As someone who lives in Chicago and hates the Bears this was hard to watch. Bengals should have won this by two scores. Someone should tell Marvin they only get three timeouts in a half and they need to hold on to them sometimes.

_________________

In case you were watching something else, Marvin didn’t call the timeouts, it was the defense #55 for too many on the field, they showed awareness and made the right move….

Should have been a penalty for hitting cutler in the head sliding, but did you see Long run over and get in the guys face after? He’s ready to fight anyone!

cincy85 says:Sep 8, 2013 5:21 PM

Bears fans can talk all the smack they want but there ain’t no denying that the bengals bone headed mistakes gave them the game. Kirkpatrick’s unnecessary roughness gave them field position for a field goal. The sanu fumble was huge seeing as how the bengals were driving at the 20 yard line. Then Rey with his crap at the very end. The better team lost today… Unfortunately if the bengals don’t clean up all the stupid mistakes this will be the outcome every week.

bengals3285 says:Sep 8, 2013 5:22 PM

If you watched the game, you know the bengals played better overall. Just bad coaching and player discipline late in the game. Terrible way to lose.

bengals3285 says:Sep 8, 2013 5:23 PM

And I love seeing the haters talk because try know the bengals are going to be the AFC team to beat this year along with the broncos

@Larryboodry
You hate Cutler? man dont let the Wisconsin media turn you against Cutler. Now he has the O-line, the TE, and the Coach. The Bears will be 12-4 this season WIN the division and a first round bye. then Cutler will get a new Contract.

ososrule says:
Sep 8, 2013 5:04 PM
aceinthehole12 says:
Sep 8, 2013 4:40 PM
As someone who lives in Chicago and hates the Bears this was hard to watch. Bengals should have won this by two scores. Someone should tell Marvin they only get three timeouts in a half and they need to hold on to them sometimes.

_________________

In case you were watching something else, Marvin didn’t call the timeouts, it was the defense #55 for too many on the field, they showed awareness and made the right move….

Bears Rule! btw….

Meant for Lewis to relay that to his men. Hate is strong word..I dislike the Bears but I hope they have a good year. Still this was a game Cincy should have won.

Bears fans can talk all the smack they want but there ain’t no denying that the bengals bone headed mistakes gave them the game. Kirkpatrick’s unnecessary roughness gave them field position for a field goal. The sanu fumble was huge seeing as how the bengals were driving at the 20 yard line. Then Rey with his crap at the very end. The better team lost today… Unfortunately if the bengals don’t clean up all the stupid mistakes this will be the outcome every week.

_________________________________

….Any given Sunday buddy! When its all said and done a wins a win!! 1-0!! first time we beat cincy in chicago since 89′ and damn it feels good considering we have a NEW head coach and rookie O-line :::ZERO SACKS BTW:::…DAA BEARSS!!

Congrats to the Bears. You made plays when you had to. However, you got away with several personal fouls. Bengals D did fail in 3rd down stops. But I absolutely have to laugh my Arse
off at the notion that the Bengals beat themselves. They got schooled and will have to regroup. Good luck to you all and hope to see you in the Superbowl.

Chicago just had a comeback WIN
with 14 unanswered points. Cutler just put his team on his back and won that game. thats what happend… but do anyone give Cutler credit.. NO but they will because he can only win one game at a time

Anyone else notice the late drive killing hold by Orson the fullback after a nice run by Gio? If they make the right personnel decision and go with John Connor instead, they win this game.

larryboodry says:Sep 8, 2013 6:01 PM

chi01town, you gotta learn to read my posts carefully…I was quoting someone else who hates Cutler, and saying how sweet it was that Cutler and the Bears schooled his team. You’re an idiot because you never understand what intelligent fans say…You did this once before when you wrongly accused me of being a Packers fan. I’m done backing you when other fans criticize you.

1 Charles Tillman is a heck of a player
2 Vontaze Burfict is a monster
3 I hate Cutler more than any other QB in the league
4 Marvin Lewis is the worst game management coach ever and has the ability to hold this team back.

___________________________________

You hate Cutler more than any other QB in the League……Why? Cause he beat your team or because your desperate and you use negativity from the past to your advantage? Wow, Bengals fans….just shut up already, you got owned!

hotketchup99 says:Sep 8, 2013 6:09 PM

I love the way Mills and Long played today, I didn’t hear Atkins name at all this game. Offence looks much better and as far as AJ Green goes, Tillman was dehydrated so you cant knock him too much. Good game by both teams

larryboodry says:
Sep 8, 2013 6:01 PM
chi01town, you gotta learn to read my posts carefully…I was quoting someone else who hates Cutler, and saying how sweet it was that Cutler and the Bears schooled his team. You’re an idiot because you never understand what intelligent fans say…You did this once before when you wrongly accused me of being a Packers fan. I’m done backing you when other fans criticize you.

____________________________________

Larry’s first round, first pick of the draft was Jay Cutler in our PFT Troll FF League-This man is the biggest Cutler fan I know!

bengals3285 says:
Sep 8, 2013 5:22 PM
If you watched the game, you know the bengals played better overall. Just bad coaching and player discipline late in the game. Terrible way to lose.
=================================
Poor Bengals.
They outplayed the Bears for 30 min. and were winning.
And then they had to play the 2nd half of the game.

Why can’t the league just call the game whenever the Bengals are ahead so their fans can feel good about themselves?

filthymcnasty was about to type in his sorry line of the Bears being classless, but then realized he didn’t have a leg to stand on after watching the cro-magnon Clay Matthews and the rest run up the personal foul count.

@Larryboodry
I know this game NOT just the Chicago Bears. so I dont take stock in what a lot of these guys say anyway. half of them want to be english teachers when they are wrong ( packers fans ) but this is a football post not a spelling test.

I hate when one team beats the other (by doing the thing it’s known for – creating turnovers and capitalizing off of them) and the entire story is how the one team blew the game and lost it, rather than how the Bears won it.

The Bears won the game. The Bengals didn’t lose it. It wasn’t handed to the Bears. They took it away. They are still playing the same ballhawk, turnover-machine defense, and still have most of the same players on defense. It’s how they play.

respectgsh says:Sep 8, 2013 11:40 PM

I am sure there are many classy Bengals fans out there. Some other fans such as bengalguy and others were posting how the Bengals would whip the Bears and how Cutler would throw 3 INTs. Well there may be a positive in this loss for you. You could learn to wait to talk smack until after your team (not you BTW) actually wins the game, you know because you we’re dead wrong and it makes you sound stupid.

Early in the game they said “look at Marvin Lewis, he’s in total control of where this franchise is headed”. Then to see the timeouts wasted and the Bengals go all Oakland Raider-ish was a little ironic. Not a Bengal hater but the Bears victory wasn’t a miracle they were out played for 30 minutes but everyone knows the games are 60 minutes. Much credit due to the art of the take away.

dashrendar1 says:Sep 9, 2013 10:25 AM

Came down to Turnovers 3 to 1. Whoever wins the TO battle usually wins the game. Bengals looked good today besides boneheaded penalties (on big plays) and the decision to not run the clock out at the end of the first half. Shouldnt have given up on the run so early too.

Lots of angry talk on here. I think both teams are good and if they played 10 times it be 5-5 or 6-4 either way.

Dalton looked good. (2 picks but one tipped)
Gio needs more touches than Law Firm
Green is sick-nasty
Burfict is a stud
Dunlap looked good
Both TE looked good

whosey1982 says:Sep 9, 2013 10:32 AM

The Bengals are a better team. Let’s see how inflated the Bears fans’ egos are about halfway through the season when we are 6-2 and they’re 3-3

pdennis33 says:Sep 9, 2013 11:14 AM

Let’s stop with the better team lost talk, the game is over and the Bears won, k? In talking about “the better team” it’s purely opinion, and the score is purely fact. The Bengals are a good team and I’m sure will have a good year, but you lost to the Bears, please move on.

I’m not going to say anything bad about the Bengals, this to me is about talking about the good of the Bears. I’m also not going to start talking Super Bowl either for the Bears because it’s obviously week 1.

However, the Bengals are a team that are a popular pick to go deep into the playoffs. They’re a team with a very established coach, longest tenured in the NFL, and their D had the MOST sacks in the NFL last year, with their D-line having almost all of them.

With all of that taken into account, and the Bears having a completely new coaching staff except for a couple assistant coaches, we had a LOT of great things to take out of the game:

• Marshall looks healthy and happy! And he looked genuinely as excited for others to make huge plays as when he made them. Just like he’s been since he got here, a great player and great leader.
• Cutler was put in many tough situations and only had the one mistake in the INT. I saw him numerous times talking to Trestman and teammates on the sideline, calmly. He had many great decisions, not just on the big plays.
• They got Forte, Marty Bennett, and Jeffery involved very well, and all of them made clutch plays. In fact it seemed like everyone on the team took a turn making a clutch play.
• Trestman’s approach was the same as we’ve seen since he got here; calm, thoughtful, calculated, and consistent, no matter what happened. Hats off to him for being so collected in his first game as a head coach in the NFL.
• Our offensive line allowed ZERO SACKS!! Last year Cutler would have probably had another 9 sack and concussion game.
• This is a complicated offense that they had to learn, and like Michael Bush said about this game, they’ve barely scratched the surface of the playbook. If they’re only scratching the surface and they were still good enough to move the ball and score on one of the better defenses in the NFL, that’s one of the biggest takeaways from this game for me.
• This game was not too big for the 2 rookie o-linemen. They both played a really solid game, along with the rest of the line.
• Cutler, for the first time in a long time and maybe ever with the Bears, said after the win that you have to give a ton of credit to the o-line and praised them over and over, along with calling Trestman’s play-calling “ballsy”
• Last but certainly not least, one of the true leaders and long-term Bears from the Lovie era, Lance Briggs, presented Trestman with the game ball afterward.

Just one game with lots to clean up, but there’s no reason not to take minute and look at all the great things that came out of it. Especially being the first game of a new era.

I’m just excited about a lot of the little things I’m seeing, and excited about the direction we’re going as a team.

The bears stuck with the game longer and in the end, outplayed the Bengals. Enough of the “the bengals lost the game but the bears didn’t win it”.

Anyone that says Andy Dalton is to blame for that loss is a moron. Him putting passes on the dot is what kept us in it. 2 interceptions – 1 from a good read by tillman and the other was a bad drop by AJ.

I’m having a hard time blaming the game on Marvin. There were some issues but I would be more inclined to blame the assistant coaches for player substitution problems.

Again, the Bears earned it. They could have laid down after the way the Bengals manhandled them at the beginning but instead stuck with it and outplayed us until the final play.

Great comeback win by the Bears! It’s an overused cliche, but in this case it rings true: the Bears had an excellent TEAM win today:

-Huge turnovers by the defense (Tillman rocks, remains underrated)

-Robbie Gould/Special teams were clutch…a 58 yarder? I believe it was record setting (for Gould, and Soldier Field, and the franchise), and ultimately that 3 points decided the game

-Cutler was both poised and aggressive. Didn’t force anything. Led the comeback when he needed to. Offense controlled the clock at the end for the last 6 mins to secure the win. And most importantly: ZERO sacks!

My ONLY dismay about the Bears based on this one game was the almost complete lack of pressure by the d-line. Where was the penetration and disruption? Where was Peppers?

That’s the one area I’m really looking/hoping to see improvement in for the next game. If Bears don’t start getting pressure up front, they’ll continue getting burned by those big plays all season long.

All-in-all, though – I’m VERY happy and impressed with what I saw from Chicago.

Bear Down!

larryboodry says:Sep 9, 2013 1:42 PM

whosey1982 says: Sep 9, 2013 10:32 AM

“The Bengals are a better team. Let’s see how inflated the Bears fans’ egos are about halfway through the season when we are 6-2 and they’re 3-3.”

1.) There are two reasons the Bears will not be at .500 halfway throught the season. One, they are a much better team than that, and two, it is physically impossible to be 3-3 after 8 games. Learn basic math.

2.) If your team doesn’t also learn basic math (11 is not equal to 10 or 12), then the Bengals will more likely be 2-6 at the midway point.

3.) You’re talking smack after blowing an 11-point lead in a game you did not dominate – regardless of how you spin it, Dalton-to-Green was your only bright spot. No sacks from your over-hyped ‘D’. So who’s got the inflated ego?

bonniebengal says:Sep 9, 2013 8:21 PM

The Bengals had this game and gave it away. They are super talented, but they made some boneheaded mistakes and aksi gave the ball away three times. They basically handed the game to the Bears. I expect them to come out more disciplined from this next week.

What happend here is… Jay Cutler put his team on his back and gave the City of Chicago a COME BACK WIN. but No one wants to give Cutler the credit he is due. well let me help EVERYBODY see this right.. the offense scored 24 points out there. NO SACKS, ONLY 50 yards rushing. Cutler completed passes to
Marshall, Bennett, Ashlon, Forte, and Bennett #2 NOW thats 5 targets
with two 4th quarter TD’s. Any other QB would have been player of the week, with a brand new chevy truck advertisement all over TV. Im not saying treat Cutler any better than other QB’s here, Im saying treat him the same

jtbsteeler says:Sep 10, 2013 10:13 AM

The Steelers own you in Prime Time. Especially when you think you’ll win.